Happy New Year for BIT-Sindri placement
- Student ire over tardy campus recruitment spurs team rejig with welcome results

OUR CORRESPONDENT

Job boom after slump

After a rough run in placements in 2012, BIT-Sindri, one of the oldest Indian tech institutes, has begun 2013 well.

Two of its final-year civil engineering students have been picked up by Era Infra Engineering Limited with a yearly Rs 3.5 lakh pay package during a pool campus — one in which many tech cradles in the region gather — conducted at NIT-Patna on January 3, 2013. Results were declared on Friday.

This apart, eight BTech electrical and five mining engineering students on Friday sat for campus placement for Calcutta-based Joy Mining Machinery, results of which are likely to be declared at night.

An eight-member team of Larsen & Toubro arrived on campus on Friday. It will pick aspirants on Saturday.

“Things are looking up,” said BIT-Sindri spokesman (training and placement cell) S.C. Dutta. “With the selection of two students in Era Infra Engineering, the placement figure has reached 128. We are expecting the figure to cross 150 in the next week or so and are in constant touch with headhunters,” he added.

Though Dutta declined to give names of proposed recruiters, he said they were “around half a dozen”. “They may come in January,” he said.

Things started looking up from December 11, when nine students of BTech civil engineering were lapped up by Ambuja Cement, which offered an annual pay package of Rs 3.5 lakh each.

Otherwise, students were been a disgruntled lot. Of 700 students, only 116 were placed.

More than 200 final-year students of the institute sat on a six-hour dharna outside the institute’s main gate on December 5 to protest against the slow pace of placement of the present session (2012-13), leading to the intervention of the police and district administration. Students had alleged that the placement cell was not liasing properly while the cradle cited recession.

Then, on December 9, the placement cell was reconstituted. Head of mining engineering department U.K. Dey came on board as the new professor in-charge of training and placement cell.

A 10-member placement cell team comprising teachers across engineering branches was formed to help liaison with companies.